In the Debate Over North Korea, Does Anyone Care What South Korea Thinks?

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A crowd awaiting President Trump outside the National Cemetery in Seoul on Nov. 8.CreditJung Yeon-je/Getty Images

By E. Tammy Kim

Nov. 10, 2017

In mid-September, during the United Nations General Assembly, the newly elected president of South Korea, Moon Jae-in, held a banquet for Korean-Americans in a Midtown Manhattan hotel. The grand ballroom was crowded with dark-suited businessmen and hipster chefs, philanthropists and clergy, dancers and artists, and the tiger and bear mascots of the upcoming Pyeongchang Winter Olympics. Moon took the stage in his trademark navy-blue suit and John Lennon glasses. In his undulating baritone, he gave a speech advertising the Olympics, expressing kinship with the 7.4 million ethnic Koreans living abroad and vowing a diplomatic approach to the latest phase of conflict with North Korea.

North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, had just launched a missile over Japan, and President Trump had used his U.N. appearance to threaten to “totally destroy” Pyongyang. Moon, by contrast, told the audience that he would bring the North Korean crisis to the U.N. with “genuinely peaceful intentions.”

After his speech, there was a series of remarks from the floor, the microphone steered by a woman in traditional hanbok. One speaker was a uniformed cadet from West Point, born in Anyang, South Korea. He spoke in rusty Korean of how proud he was to represent the U.S. military and his immigrant peers. Moon was moved enough by these remarks that he crossed the room to offer an embrace. He thanked the cadets for their service — not only to the United States but also to South Korea.

Over the past few months of tensions with the North, an old-fashioned Sino-Korean word has been on my mind: sadaesasang. Often translated as “flunkyism,” it describes an expedient form of politics in which a small state, putting self-determination aside, gloms on to a more powerful one. In North Korea’s official newspaper, sadaesasang is a pejorative word leveled at the South, the lackey of “Yankee bastards” — ostensibly the antithesis of Pyongyang’s juche self-reliance and independence from the West.

The North is correct that Seoul depends on the United States, but this is not flunkyism so much as an involuntary alignment with Trumpian aims. The American president is goading our Asian allies toward war, or something just short of it. His combat with North Korea has cast a defensive gloom over the region and given nationalisms a chance to flourish. Yet the more Japan and South Korea assert themselves, the less liberated they become.

In Tokyo, Trump gave Prime Minister Shinzo Abe fodder for his agenda of militarization and encouraged him to buy more weapons from the United States. Just outside Seoul, Trump went with President Moon to greet soldiers at Camp Humphreys and bragged that Korea would be spending “billions of dollars” on American-made armaments. Still, the administration demands “gratitude.” During and immediately after the Korean War, Seoul had no choice but to pursue a strategy of sadaesasang. The world was cleaved in two, and so the Korean Peninsula went — the South to the Americans; the North to the Soviets. Seventy years later, there are still more than a dozen U.S. military bases in South Korea, staffed by nearly 30,000 troops. This is not Trump’s doing, but his cavalier provocations have cemented Korean reliance on America.

President Moon, a human rights lawyer by trade, assumed office in May. He ran on a platform of left-of-center nationalism — political accountability, economic justice, denuclearization and improved relations with the North — after his right-wing predecessor, Park Geun-hye, was thrown out by a protest movement on the scale of the Arab Spring. But North Korea’s missile tests and Trump’s Twitter-enabled temper dragged him swiftly rightward. By early September, he was warning the North of “countermeasures” and allowed the United States to install the Thaad missile-defense system on Korean soil — a move that managed to anger both his supporters and the Chinese government.

A few weeks later, Moon tried to regroup in his speech before the United Nations General Assembly. He called for peace and situated himself, and the continuing nuclear standoff, in a lineage of war and division. “I was born in a refugee town in the middle of the Korean War,” he said. “I come from one of the separated families.” Yet the vast hall was mostly empty; only the Korean delegations and a man from El Salvador were in their seats. Though there is no state with more at stake when it comes to North Korea, South Korea is seldom heard.

The nuclear crisis is such that what passes for independent South Korean policy is this: the imminent construction of a Korean missile-defense system, wholly separate from the one already installed by the United States. (Never mind that it was purchased from Washington, or that Trump has veto power over Korean weapons payloads.) South Korea’s foreign minister, Kang Kyung-wha, took pains to explain this distinction in late October. “We will not participate in America’s missile-defense networks,” she said. “Thaad is a self-defense measure that has nothing to do with Korea’s missile defense.”

President Moon has consistently said that there will never be another Korean War and that no action can be taken against North Korea without the South’s consent. He put this as sharply as he ever had just days before Trump’s arrival: “The destiny of the Korean nation must be determined by Koreans. The unfortunate past in which our destiny was determined against our will, through colonial rule and national division, must never be allowed to recur.” It’s a reassuring message, but not entirely credible. Trump seems unwilling to accept the South’s involvement in North Korean affairs, even when in driving distance of the demilitarized zone.

On Wednesday, Trump spoke before the National Assembly in Seoul, but he addressed most of his comments to North Korea. “The weapons you are acquiring are not making you safer,” he said. “They are putting your regime in great danger.” But this logic went in only one direction. Trump noted that in nearby waters, “the three largest aircraft carriers in the world, loaded to the maximum with magnificent F-35 and F-18 fighter jets,” were preparing for yet another military drill.

The crowd outside the National Assembly — waving stars and stripes or “No Trump, No War” signs — showed the extent to which feelings about America dictate local politics. Many South Koreans still credit the United States for their midcentury liberation; they hate the North and welcome America’s backing, equating hostility with security. Yet millions more, including those who voted for President Moon, reject this sadaesasang. They are seeking an alternative, independent route to peace.

E. Tammy Kim is a reporter and essayist.

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